"The suggestion to "ignore" science as one policy option regarding climate change was suggested in a memo prepared for senior White House and federal agency officials last fall by Michael Catanzaro, former Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Energy and Environmental Policy, according to a recent story in the Washington Post. Mr. Catanzaro, who joined the Trump Administration in 2017 from the CGCN Group, where he was a lobbyist for the oil and gas industry returned to CGCN in April 2018. However, the Members pointed out in the letter to Chairman Abraham, "the implications of his 'ignore science' memo still warrant a thorough review and appropriate oversight from the Science Committee - it speaks volumes as to how this Administration handles scientific evidence."

"Another reason why he was quickly captured probably is that he knows nothing about science. In justifying himself, Bridenstine referred to "The Science" as having convinced him. Whenever anybody talks vaguely about "The Science" as his justification for believing in global warming that is a sure sign that he in fact knows nothing about the issues involved. He is just appealing to authority, which is almost always a dumb thing to do."

Keith's note: Hilarious. When Jim Bridenstine was nominated to be NASA Administrator he was derided (mostly by people on the left side of the political spectrum) for having no scientific background i.e. anti-science and of being a climate change denier. As Bridenstine talked to actual climate scientists at NASA he became convinced that the scientific basis of human contributions to climate change was real - and said so. Now the political right derides Bridenstine for having no scientific background because he listened to actual scientists.

"There are exceptions to the retreat from science. In April, scientists bristled when Jim Bridenstine, a former Republican congressman from Oklahoma who is not a scientist, took over the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Mr. Bridenstine had questioned whether human activity is the primary cause of global warming. But last month Mr. Bridenstine testified before a Senate committee that he had experienced a climate-science conversion. Asked if he believed greenhouse gases are the primary cause of the warming planet, he responded, "Yes." His own agency, he said, has found it "extremely likely that human activity is the dominant cause of global warming, and I have no reason to doubt the science." Mr. Bridenstine described his views as an "evolution." Moments like these are not the norm, however."

I fought Jim Bridenstine to run NASA because he was a climate denier. He has since changed his mind, and has confirmed that climate change is caused by humans. This is an act of common sense and courage. Thank you, Administrator Bridenstine. https://t.co/ZxBbkqefVn

Keith's note: This is somewhat baffling. The AGU is not some fly by night organization but rather one with an impressive history. That said, I cannot understand why they can't take a moment to inform their membership that Jim Bridenstine has made several clear statements about climate science - statements that directly concern issues raised by the AGU and its membership.

"President Trump's newly minted head of NASA said Thursday that climate change is happening and humans are contributing to it in a "major way." Jim Bridenstine, a GOP congressman who was confirmed as the new administrator of NASA last month, made the comments while speaking to employees at his first town hall at NASA headquarters in Washington. "I don't deny the consensus that the climate is changing, in fact I fully believe and know that the climate is changing. I also know that we human beings are contributing to it in a major way," Bridenstine said."

"The House appropriations panel that oversees NASA unanimously approved an amendment to a 2019 spending bill that orders the space agency to set aside $10 million within its earth science budget for a "climate monitoring system" that studies "biogeochemical processes to better understand the major factors driving short and long term climate change." That sounds almost identical to the work that NASA's Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) was doing before the Trump administration targeted the program, which was getting about $10 million annually, for elimination this year."

"A Republican lawmaker on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee said Thursday that rocks from the White Cliffs of Dover and the California coastline, as well as silt from rivers tumbling into the ocean, are contributing to high sea levels globally. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) made the comment during a hearing on technology and the changing climate, which largely turned into a Q&A on the basics of climate research."

"The Earth is not warming. The White Cliffs of Dover are tumbling into the sea and causing sea levels to rise. Global warming is helping grow the Antarctic ice sheet. Those are some of the skeptical assertions echoed by Republicans on the U.S. House of Representatives Science, Space and Technology Committee yesterday."

"Certainly 3.3 millimeters doesn't sound like a lot of water to displace, and it does seem, to Brooks's point, that it's an amount -- about 0.1 inch -- that would be easy to displace with a cliff collapse near San Diego. The equivalent rise relative to surface area in an Olympic-sized swimming pool would be 0.0000000000114 millimeters. That's not possible, though, since a water molecule isn't that small. But when you apply 3.3 millimeters of rise to the entire ocean? We're talking about a lot of water that's displaced -- 3.3 millimeters across about 362 million square kilometers of surface area. The total volume displaced, then, would be 1.19 trillion cubic meters of water."

"It would have been comical if it had come from a middle school science fair, but it didn't. It came from a guy on a committee making decisions for the most powerful country on earth about the future of the planet. Brooks made his comments while questioning climate scientist Philip Duffy, who had pointed out that seas across the world are rising four times faster than they did a century ago. Instead of dealing with the ways to protect the future, to consider the possibility climate scientists know what they are talking about, he just threw rocks. "Every time you have that soil or rock or whatever it is that is deposited into the seas, that forces the sea levels to rise, because now you have less space in those oceans, because the bottom is moving up," he said. Mo's laws. Perplexing for a scientist. "I'm pretty sure that on human time scales, those are miniscule effects," Duffy responded."

"Over the history of planet Earth, far and away the #1 cause of sea level rise has been erosion and its resulting deposits of sediment and rocks into the world's seas and oceans. There is no close second cause of sea level rise. At a minimum, over many millions of years, thousands of cubic miles of eroded material have been deposited into the Earth's seas, forcing rising sea levels."

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"we unite and write you today to request a commitment to NASA's role as an earth science agency." @ScienceMarch is circulating a petition that will be sent to recently-appointed NASA head Jim Bridenstine. https://t.co/6tg4XCsMax

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"You can't manage what you don't measure. The adage is especially relevant for climate-warming greenhouse gases, which are crucial to manage - and challenging to measure. In recent years, though, satellite and aircraft instruments have begun monitoring carbon dioxide and methane remotely, and NASA's Carbon Monitoring System (CMS), a $10-million-a-year research line, has helped stitch together observations of sources and sinks into high-resolution models of the planet's flows of carbon. Now, President Donald Trump's administration has quietly killed the CMS, Science has learned."

"Apart from its substantial scientific contributions and contrary to NASA policy, we found that 43 of 66 (65 percent) new GISS scientific publications publicly released from October 2015 through September 2017 were not approved by GISS or Goddard officials prior to release. NASA policy requires numerous reviews and approvals before scientific information can be publically released. These procedures - which include a technical review, export control review, a series of supervisory approvals and, if needed, a legal review - are designed to ensure the accuracy of scientific information released to the public and to prevent inadvertent release of sensitive information. Moreover, we found inadequate NASA guidance related to the independence and qualifications of the initial approver in the technical review process and other practices not in conformance with best practices.

We also found multiple instances of unallowable use of NASA-appropriated funds by GISS employees, grant recipients, and contractors for salary expenses, sub-contracting, and computer equipment. Based on our review of these unallowable expenses, improper charges under GISS' support contract, and the improper use of purchase cards, we question $1.63 million of GISS' expenditures since 2012. In our judgment, this inappropriate use of NASA funds was largely the result of insufficient oversight by the principal investigators, NASA's technical officers, and approving officials coupled with the absence of a senior-level administrator at GISS to manage the Institute's grants and cooperative agreements.

Finally, GISS routinely collaborates with public and private institutions on an ad hoc basis to achieve NASA's strategic research goals. However, we found that the Institute is missing opportunities to partner with other Federal agencies and entities that conduct similar work because NASA lacks the long-term interagency agreements needed to set goals and objectives and provide needed funding. In our judgment, improved coordination may lead to efficiencies across agencies that do similar climate research and modeling."

"NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) should implement a coordinated approach for their space-based environmental observations to further advance Earth science and applications for the next decade, says a new report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. This approach should be based on key scientific questions in areas such as reducing climate uncertainty, improving weather and air quality forecasts, predicting geological hazards, and understanding sea-level rise. The report also recommends building a robust, resilient, and balanced U.S. program of Earth observations from space that will enable the agencies to strategically advance the science and applications with constrained resources."

"Rep. Jim Bridenstine, R-Okla., President Donald Trump's nominee for NASA administrator, spoke glowingly of the decadal survey process during his Nov. 1 confirmation, and he said "yes" when Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., asked if he would follow the recommendations. Bridenstine said the surveys lead policymakers to "make good decisions," and he added: "We need to follow the decadals."

"U.S. scientists plan to release their once-a-decade list of recommended Earth observation spending priorities Friday in a press conference in Washington, D.C. The scientific community survey, "Thriving on Our Changing Planet: A Decadal Strategy for Earth Observation from Space," was written by a committee assembled by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. Known informally as the Earth sciences decadal survey, the document could affect spending decisions by Congress and the Trump administration, especially in the politically sensitive area of climate science. Rep. Jim Bridenstine, R-Okla., President Donald Trump's nominee for NASA administrator, spoke glowingly of the decadal survey process during his Nov. 1 confirmation, and he said "yes" when Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., asked if he would follow the recommendations.Bridenstine said the surveys lead policymakers to "make good decisions," and he added: "We need to follow the decadals."

"An extensive report published by the federal government Friday asserts that humans are the primary driver of climate change, causing higher temperatures, sea level rise, agriculture problems and more. The report, the first volume of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, is years in the making, and involved contributions from more than a dozen federal agencies. It is meant to be an authoritative assessment of the current state of climate change science. Many of the report's conclusions directly contradict the Trump administration's positions on climate change."

"This assessment concludes, based on extensive evidence, that it is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence. In addition to warming, many other aspects of global climate are changing, primarily in response to human activities."

"The report was approved for release by the White House, but the findings come as the Trump administration is defending its climate change policies on several fronts. ... While there were pockets of resistance to the report in the Trump administration, there was little appetite for a knockdown fight over climate change among Mr. Trump's top advisers, who are intensely focused on passing a tax reform bill - an effort they think could determine the fate of his presidency."

"The Environmental Protection Agency has instructed two of its scientists and one contractor not to speak as planned at a scientific conference Monday in Providence, R.I., sparking criticism from some academics and congressional Democrats. The conference marks the culmination of a three-year report on the status of Narragansett Bay, New England's largest estuary, and the challenges it faces. Climate change features as a significant factor in the 500-page report, which evaluates 24 aspects of the bay and its larger watershed. The organizers intend to present a 28-page summary report of their findings in a news conference Monday."

"Let's get right to it. Understanding the dynamics of our Earth, including disasters like hurricanes and droughts, has never seemed more important. As if on cue, we have a confirmation hearing for the NASA Administrator nominee coming down the pike. Is President Trump's nominee, Representative Jim Bridenstine (R-OK), the right fit?"

"Marco Rubio and Bill Nelson have already lobbed objections to Jim Bridenstine, President Donald Trump's pick to head NASA. Now, more than 30 Florida scientists signed a letter to the state's U.S. senators, urging them to outright reject Bridenstine when he comes up for confirmation. Among the criticisms that scientists around the nation have voiced about Bridenstine is that he has said that he doesn't believe humans are causing climate change. "We find it troubling that Congressman Bridenstine has repeated misinformation in his quest to deny climate change, notably in 2013 when he suggested that global temperatures were not rising," the scientists write to Rubio and Nelson. "Climate and weather are intertwined and while we know that Congressman Bridenstine has publicly expressed desire for better weather prediction capabilities, we cannot predict weather events if we ignore emerging trends."

"Both Nelson and Rubio have blasted Trump's choice, but neither has said whether they will vote against Bridenstine. In their letter, the scientists pointed out that Bridenstine has no formal science education. And while he serves on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, he has no experience running such a large agency and no experience with scientific research. A former Navy pilot, he once ran Tulsa's Air and Space Museum."

"On Sunday, the British tabloid The Mail on Sunday, was forced to publish an "adverse adjudication" against it by the Independent Press Standards Organization (IPSO), the independent regulator of the British newspaper and magazine industry, regarding a climate change story it published on February 5, 2017, by controversial reporter David Rose. The article, with the original online headline: Exposed: How world leaders were duped into investing billions over manipulated global warming data, was largely based on an interview with Dr. John Bates, a former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientist about his criticism of a NOAA climate study. In its published findings, the IPSO concluded that the article was both inaccurate and misleading. ... Science Committee Republicans had seized on the misleading The Mail on Sunday article and published their own press release the same day the article appeared on February 5, 2017 with a headline that also twisted the comments by Dr. Bates, incorrectly asserting that Dr. Bates had said NOAA colleagues "manipulated climate records.""

"U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology members today responded to reports about the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) 2015 climate change study ("the Karl study"). According to Dr. John Bates, the recently retired principal scientist at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, the Karl study was used "to discredit the notion of a global warming hiatus and rush to time the publication of the paper to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy."

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"Hurricane Irma's approach toward Florida hasn't deterred SpaceX's plan to launch a rocket Thursday. The Elon Musk-led space company announced Wednesday that a 5-hour, 5-minute window will open at 9:50 a.m. Thursday. U.S. Air Force officials have said that the chances of a launch sit about 50 percent. SpaceX will try to land the rocket on a landing zone, a move expected to result in a sonic boom that will be heard across Central Florida. If the Falcon 9 rocket does not go up, a second window will open at an undetermined time Friday."

"On Wednesday, Kennedy Space Center enacted a HURCON IV declaration by the Emergency Operation Center, meaning center managers are preparing facilities and their employees for 58 mph winds within 72 hours. ... Under a HURCON declaration all normal operations stop to prepare for the storm, according to NASA."

"The Environmental Protection Agency has taken the unusual step of putting a political operative in charge of vetting the hundreds of millions of dollars in grants the EPA distributes annually, assigning final funding decisions to a former Trump campaign aide with little environmental policy experience. In this role, John Konkus reviews every award the agency gives out, along with every grant solicitation before it is issued. According to both career and political employees, Konkus has told staff that he is on the lookout for "the double C-word" -- climate change -- and repeatedly has instructed grant officers to eliminate references to the subject in solicitations."

"BRIDENSTINE: Mr. Speaker, global temperatures stopped rising 10 years ago. Global temperature changes, when they exist, correlate with Sun output and ocean cycles. During the Medieval Warm Period from 800 to 1300 A.D. --long before cars, power plants, or the Industrial Revolution--temperatures were warmer than today. During the Little Ice Age from 1300 to 1900 A.D., temperatures were cooler. Neither of these periods were caused by any human activity. Even climate change alarmists admit that the number of hurricanes hitting the U.S. and the number of tornado touchdowns have been on a slow decline for over 100 years. But here's what we absolutely know. We know that Oklahoma will have tornadoes when the cold jet stream meets the warm gulf air. And we also know that this President spends 30 times as much money on global warming research as he does on weather forecasting and warning. For this gross misallocation, the people of Oklahoma are ready to accept the President's apology, and I intend to submit legislation to fix this."

"All of that to say, in science, we know nothing. We can only do the best we can with what we know and if we are so hard pressed on believing that the earth is warming because of my Buick, then we can find evidence to prove that theory correct. But we can also find evidence that the earth has gone through cycles on hot and cold and gee.....that means that our carbon dating and light speeds change too. This is the same with all types of science. We can prove that oil fracking can rejuvenate the crust and make the surface flourish if we look for that evidence instead of pointing fingers at the oil companies. But of course this all comes down to what makes sensational news or if you are taking a position of defending your business model or political policies."

"The US Department of Energy (DOE) is asking scientists to reword their grant proposals so as to avoid mentions of "climate change" or "global warming," researchers say. The move came to light when Jennifer Bowen, an ecologist at Northeastern University's Marine Science Center, posted part of an email from a DOE official on Friday (August 25), prompting a backlash from members of the scientific community over perceived interference from President Trump's administration in climate research. "I found it to be a stark reminder of the ongoing politicization of science," Bowen writes in an email to The Washington Post. "I firmly believe that scientists should have the intellectual freedom to tackle the most pressing issues of the day, regardless of the political landscape."

"A unit of the National Institutes of Health has removed references to climate "change" from its website, deletions that one environmental group criticizes as "cleansing" but an NIH official describes as minor. The revisions occurred on the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences site. A headline that read "Climate Change and Human Health," for example, was altered to "Climate and Human Health." A menu title that read "Climate Change and Children's Health" in June now appears as "Climate and Children's Health." Links to a fact sheet on "Climate Change and Human Health" also were removed. "The cleansing continues," said David Doniger, director of the climate and clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "But they're not going to be able to erase the science, or the truth, by scrubbing websites." The changes were revealed in a report by the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, a group of nonprofits and academics who monitor what they call "potential threats" to federal policy and scientific research on energy and the environment."

"The Trump administration has decided to disband the federal advisory panel for the National Climate Assessment, a group aimed at helping policymakers and private-sector officials incorporate the government's climate analysis into long-term planning. ... Administration officials are currently reviewing a scientific report that is key to the final document. Known as the Climate Science Special Report, it was produced by scientists from 13 different federal agencies and estimates that human activities were responsible for an increase in global temperatures of 1.1 to 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit from 1951 to 2010."

"Staff at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) have been told to avoid using the term climate change in their work, with the officials instructed to reference "weather extremes" instead. A series of emails obtained by the Guardian between staff at the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), a USDA unit that oversees farmers' land conservation, show that the incoming Trump administration has had a stark impact on the language used by some federal employees around climate change."

"A climate report based on work conducted by scientists in 13 federal agencies is under active review at the White House, and its conclusions about the far-reaching damage already occurring from global warming are at odds with the Trump administration's views. The report, known as the Climate Science Special Report, finds it is "extremely likely" that more than half of the rise in temperatures over the past four decades has been caused by human activity -- in contrast to Trump Cabinet members' views that the magnitude of that contribution is uncertain. The draft report, which has undergone extensive review, estimates that human impact was responsible for an increase in global temperatures of 1.1 to 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit from 1951 to 2010."

"The alarmist climate media is at it again. In its latest reporting of a so-called leaked climate assessment the New York Times relies on exaggerated statements and false allegations of cover-ups in order to push an agenda."

"I was disappointed to hear President Trump formally noticing his intent to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement. As more evidence mounts that manmade climate change is a threat to our nation, it is the height of shortsightedness to surrender leadership on addressing this global challenge."

Keith's note: If USDA staff are ordered to do this, then you have to wonder when NASA and NOAA, other government agencies that study climate change on our planet, will start to do the same. Or ... will one agency have this editorial direction while others do not?

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"The Environmental Protection Agency announced Friday evening that its website would be "undergoing changes" to better represent the new direction the agency is taking, triggering the removal of several agency websites containing detailed climate data and scientific information. One of the websites that appeared to be gone had been cited to challenge statements made by the EPA's new administrator, Scott Pruitt. Another provided detailed information on the previous administration's Clean Power Plan, including fact sheets about greenhouse gas emissions on the state and local levels and how different demographic groups were affected by such emissions. The changes came less than 24 hours before thousands of protesters were set to march in Washington and around the country in support of political action to push back against the Trump administration's rollbacks of former president Barack Obama's climate policies."

"NASA successfully launched its football-stadium-sized, heavy-lift super pressure balloon (SPB) from Wanaka, New Zealand, at 10:50 a.m. Tuesday, April 25 (6:50 p.m. April 24 in U.S. Eastern Time), on a mission designed to run 100 or more days floating at 110,000 feet (33.5 km) about the globe in the southern hemisphere's mid-latitude band."

"Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), chairman of the House science committee, who issued a subpoena to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists over a study finding that there had been no slowdown or pause in global warming, told the group that it's time for "good science, rather than politically correct science." Steven Milloy, publisher of JunkScience.com, said the government has "perverted science." "There is no science going on in NOAA or NASA or EPA," said Milloy, who served on the Trump EPA transition team, to chuckles and applause. "There is no such thing as climate science."

"So far, the non-political 'career' employees at the agency are trying to remain calm and take a conciliatory approach with Trump's political appointees. "We've got four years with this administration, so we are trying to educate rather than confront," says one senior career official. Waleed Abdalati, a former chief scientist at NASA, offers similar advice to researchers who are worried about potential cuts to Earth-science programmes at NOAA and NASA. "Rumors are counterproductive," he says. "Rather than complain about what hasn't happened, we should advocate for what should happen."

Keith's note: Just remember folks, that OMB Budget Blueprint Excerpt for NASA"Provides $1.8 billion for a focused, balanced Earth science portfolio that supports the priorities of the science and applications communities, a savings of $102 million from the 2017 annualized CR level. The Budget terminates four Earth science missions (PACE, OCO-3, DSCOVR Earth-viewing instruments, and CLARREO Pathfinder) and reduces funding for Earth science research grants." This is not a budget document. Its just a snapshot in time. OMB wants to see who screams the loudest - and who doesn't scream as much. The budget that emerges in a month or two may be very different as a result. If you listen to the anti-climate change rhetoric coming out of the White House and its allied external allies and sympathetic members of Congress, it should be obvious that Earth science has a big target painted on it.

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"Provides $1.8 billion for a focused, balanced Earth science portfolio that supports the priorities of the science and applications communities, a savings of $102 million from the 2017 annualized CR level. The Budget terminates four Earth science missions (PACE, OCO-3, DSCOVR Earth-viewing instruments, and CLARREO Pathfinder) and reduces funding for Earth science research grants."

Keith's note: I asked NASA PAO "Which "Earth-viewing instruments" on DSCOVR are affected by the White House Budget Blueprint? How much does it cost NASA to operate these "Earth-viewing instruments" on DSCOVR on an annual basis? Who operates these "Earth-viewing instruments" on DSCOVR? NASA? A university? A contractor? A combination thereof?"

NASA PAO replied: "NASA provided two Earth-observing instruments on the DSCOVR spacecraft: the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology Advanced Radiometer (NISTAR). NASA funded the refurbishment and recalibration of these two instruments and is now supporting the analysis of their data. The operation of all instruments on DSCOVR is part of NOAA's responsibility as mission lead. The NASA DSCOVR budget is for EPIC and NISTAR data analysis/processing. In last year's federal budget request, NASA sought $1.7 million for this activity in FY17, $1.2 million in FY18, and $1.2 million in FY19. (See pg ES-35: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/fy_2017_budget_estimates.pdf)."

So NASA does not actually operate instruments on DSCOVR - NOAA does - but OMB wants NASA to "terminate" them anyway. And the money saved annually for NASA data analysis? $1.7 million. The cost for a single trip to Mar-a-Lago? $3 million. Priceless.

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"The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is responsible for increasing understanding of the universe and our place in it, advancing America's world-leading aerospace technology, inspiring the Nation, and opening the space frontier. The Budget increases cooperation with industry through the use of public-private partnerships, focuses the Nation's efforts on deep space exploration rather than Earth-centric research, and develops technologies that would help achieve U.S. space goals and benefit the economy. The President's 2018 Budget requests $19.1 billion for NASA, a 0.8 percent decrease from the 2017 annualized CR level, with targeted increases consistent with the President's priorities."

"President Trump's first federal budget seems to make good on his campaign promises to shift NASA's focus away from Earth and toward space. But it doesn't reveal where he thinks the agency should be headed -- to Mars, the moon or elsewhere. The total cut to the Earth-science budget is $102 million, or 5 percent of the program's annual budget, and it almost exclusively targets missions aimed at understanding climate change -- the ocean monitoring program PACE; the Orbiting Carbon ­Observatory-3; the Deep Space Climate Observatory; and the CLARREO Pathfinder, which measures heat in Earth's atmosphere. Also on the chopping block: the entire NASA Education office, which runs camps and enrichment programs, provides internships and scholarships for young scientists, and oversees efforts to support women and underrepresented minorities in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, fields."

"Trump's vision for NASA calls for some dramatic shifts from the priorities the space agency pursued under President Obama, according to a broad budget outline the White House released Thursday. Line-item details on the administration's proposed spending plan for NASA and other executive branch agencies are expected in the coming weeks."

"While more detailed budget information will be released in May, we have received a top line budget number for the agency as part of an overall government budget rollout of more than $19 billion. This is in line with our funding in recent years, and will enable us to effectively execute our core mission for the nation, even during these times of fiscal constraint. While the budget and appropriation process still has a long way to go, this budget enables us to continue our work with industry to enhance government capabilities, send humans deeper into space, continue our innovative aeronautics efforts and explore our universe."

Keith's note: NASA made out far better than other agencies. But the cuts to Earth science at NASA, NOAA and elsewhere clearly show a climate change denial trend. Equally as troubling are the cuts within agencies to education projects as well as to the education department itself. You do not need to worry about NASA Earth Science stuff being sent to NOAA since their cuts are even more extreme than NASA's. Lightfoot makes no mention whatsoever of the cuts to Earth science - he just says that "some missions are not going to go forward".

NASA's Acting Administrator also seems to think it is OK to demolish NASA's education office and that somehow NASA will make that function work elsewhere. No. There is a clear message being sent to government agencies and the White House and Congress will be watching to make sure that no education efforts are going on at NASA - just like they already make certain that NASA does not "advertise" its accomplishments to the American people.

But Robert Lightfoot wants you to think that this is all good news. NASA's leaders no longer lead. They just roll over.

"MILES O'BRIEN: Keith Cowing is a former NASA biologist who founded the watchdog Web site NASA Watch 20 years ago. He's the proto-rogue, and now he says everybody seems to be joining in.

KEITH COWING: Nobody has said, shut that database down, take that off your Web site. But what's going to happen when you have got this giant, bubbling, simmering social media crowd, and they go from being worried about things that might happen to things that are happening? There's a colossal hair trigger waiting out there."

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"Like similar groups across the country - in more than 20 cities - they believe that the Trump administration might want to disappear this data down a memory hole. So these hackers, scientists, and students are collecting it to save outside government servers. But now they're going even further. Groups like DataRefuge and the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, which organized the Berkeley hackathon to collect data from NASA's earth sciences programs and the Department of Energy, are doing more than archiving. Diehard coders are building robust systems to monitor ongoing changes to government websites. And they're keeping track of what's already been removed - because yes, the pruning has already begun."

"Earlier federal data hackathons include the "Guerrilla Archiving" event at the University of Toronto last month, the Internet Archive's Gov Data Hackathon in San Francisco at the beginning of January, and the DataRescue Philly event at the University of Pennsylvania last week. Much of the collected data is being stored in the servers of the End of Term Web Archive, a collaborative effort to preserve government websites at the conclusion of presidential terms."

"The group was split in two. One half was setting web crawlers upon NOAA web pages that could be easily copied and sent to the Internet Archive. The other was working their way through the harder-to-crack data sets--the ones that fuel pages like the EPA's incredibly detailed interactive map of greenhouse gas emissions, zoomable down to each high-emitting factory and power plant. "In that case, you have to find a back door," said Michelle Murphy, a technoscience scholar at the University of Toronto."

DG: My own belief is that global warming is real, that it is happening. . . . After all, the Earth's climate has oscillated clearly in the past. We expect not stability, but oscillation. The evidence I've seen has not convinced me that the cause of this global warming or an appreciable contribution [to it] is human activity. But not until I spend a lot more time with the topic . . . would I be in a position to give anybody advice on it. ... The fact is, the Earth is a very, very large object, and scientists especially think of themselves as gigantically important, and pushing culture around, and changing civilization--which they do, occasionally, to some extent. But I think some of them haven't fully grasped what a gigantic proposition it is for measly human activity, whether it's good or bad, to change something like the climate of a planet in the Solar System."

"TS: Did climate change come up at all during that first conversation?

WH: Very briefly. I said, 'I'm sure you know my position that I think climate change has been tremendously exaggerated--its significance. Climate is important, always has been, but I think it's become sort of a cult movement in the last five or 10 years.' So in just a sentence of two, I said, 'That's my view of it.' And he said, Well, I agree with you. But that's all we discussed."

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"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quietly and abruptly canceled a major climate change summit scheduled for next month shortly after Donald Trump was elected president, according to emails sent to those scheduled to speak and obtained by E&E News. The Climate and Health Summit was scheduled to be held in Atlanta, where the CDC is headquartered, in February. Agency leaders did not directly address why the summit was canceled and instead forwarded an email sent to participants indicating it may be rescheduled. "We are currently exploring options so that the Summit may take place later in the year," CDC officials wrote."

"Asked about concerns that the next administration could violate principles of scientific integrity at the federal agencies, or even delete federal climate change datasets, McNutt replied: "There are protections in place through government data integrity and scientific integrity acts that would, if [these data suddenly disappeared,] would say, 'Hold it. That is not allowed. This data has to come back online.' ... It would take, in my view, an incredible coordinated move to delete all copies of...climate data. On the other hand, I don't see any reason why, if people want to copy this data and back it up one more time, that it's something they shouldn't do."

"In the science community there have been alarm bells, reports that the president has already launched a war on science," says Tobin Smith, vice-president for policy at the Association for American Universities in Washington DC. "I think it's way too premature to draw that conclusion."

"Many of the programmers who showed up at UCLA for the event had day jobs as IT consultants or data managers at startups; others were undergrad computer science majors. The scientists in attendance, including ecologists, lab managers, and oceanographers, came from universities all over Southern California. A motley crew of data enthusiasts who assemble for projects like this is becoming something of a trend at universities across the country: Volunteer "data rescue" events in Toronto, Philadelphia, Chicago, Indianapolis, and Michigan over the last few weeks have managed to scrape hundreds of thousands of pages off of EPA.gov, NASA.gov, DOE.gov, and whitehouse.gov, uploading them to the Internet Archive. Another is planned for early February at New York University."

"Climate data from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been politically vulnerable. When Tom Karl, director of the National Centers for Environmental Information, and his colleagues published a study in 2015 seeking to challenge the idea that there had been a global warming "slowdown" or "pause" during the 2000s, they relied, in significant part, on updates to NOAA's ocean temperature data set, saying the data "do not support the notion of a global warming 'hiatus.'" In response, the U.S. House Science, Space and Technology Committee chair, Rep. Lamar S. Smith (R-Tex.), tried to subpoena the scientists and their records."

Keith's note: Lamar Smith's policy director throughout this period of subpoenas was Chris Shank who currently leads the Trump Transition Team effort at NASA.

"Donald Trump's transition team has issued a list of 74 questions for the Energy Department, asking agency officials to identify which employees and contractors have worked on forging an international climate pact as well as domestic efforts to cut the nation's carbon output. The questionnaire requests a list of those individuals who have taken part in international climate talks over the past five years and "which programs within DOE are essential to meeting the goals of President Obama's Climate Action Plan." ... Thousands of scientists have signed petitions calling on the president-elect and his team to respect scientific integrity and refrain from singling out individual researchers whose work might conflict with the new administration's policy goals. This potential clash could prompt a major schism within the federal government, with many career officials waging a battle against incoming political appointees."

"But with the election of Donald Trump, there was immediate concern -- inside NASA and among the fans of its valued work on global warming -- about the future of the agency's earth-science program. Within hours of Trump's acceptance speech on Nov. 9, an internal email from a senior official in the Earth Sciences division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center circulated within NASA acknowledging worry that "funding may now be exposed to severe reductions." The last month is not apt to have eased that alarm. How does an astrobiologist react when advisors to the president-elect propose cutting funding to earth studies? Trump's most visible advisor on space policy has been Bob Walker, a former House Science committee chairman who is now a space-policy lobbyist pressing to move "Earth-centric" and "heavily politicized" climate science out of NASA altogether. And Christopher Shank, who was chosen by Trump to lead the transition at NASA, is a seasoned strategist who has expressed strong skepticism about the severity of global warming."

Keith's note: There are a number of Federal agencies involved in Earth and climate science - DOE, DOI, NOAA, NSF - and NASA. Given that the DOE Trump Landing Team is trying to find out which DOE employees are involved in climate research - and that Trump transition team advisor Bob Walker has been very specific about moving "Earth centric" programs (e.g. climate research) to another agency - one would expect that the NASA Trump Landing Team is going to be asking similar questions at NASA. Stay tuned.

"The Department of Energy said Tuesday it will reject the request by President-elect Donald Trump's transition team to name staffers who worked on climate change programs. Energy spokesman Eben Burnhan-Snyder said the agency received "significant feedback" from workers regarding a questionnaire from the transition team that leaked last week. "Some of the questions asked left many in our workforce unsettled," Snyder said. The survey for department leadership included more than 70 questions regarding what the agency does, its workforce, costs, professional affiliations and more."

Keith's note: Is this overt citation by the House Science Committee of a story on Breitbart, the former employer of President Elect Trump's policy advisor, a preview of coming actions on NASA's Earth science research? Oh yes, the committee's policy director is on the Transition Team for NASA. Then again, the committee also overtly referenced NASAWatch in its letter to NASA on ARM the other day ;-)

"Bob Walker, a senior Trump campaign adviser, said there was no need for Nasa to do what he has previously described as "politically correct environmental monitoring". "We see Nasa in an exploration role, in deep space research," Walker told the Guardian. "Earth-centric science is better placed at other agencies where it is their prime mission. "My guess is that it would be difficult to stop all ongoing Nasa programs but future programs should definitely be placed with other agencies. I believe that climate research is necessary but it has been heavily politicized, which has undermined a lot of the work that researchers have been doing. Mr Trump's decisions will be based upon solid science, not politicized science."

"At one point, Clinton said, "Donald Trump says climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese." Did he? Yes, though he later said it was a joke. The original source of this claim was a tweet Trump sent on Nov. 6, 2012, as we noted in a January 2016 fact-check of a similar claim by Clinton's Democratic opponent, Bernie Sanders."

"President-elect Donald Trump conceded Tuesday there is "some connectivity" between human activity and climate change and wavered on whether he would pull the United States out of international accords aimed at combating the phenomenon, which scientists overwhelmingly agree is caused by human activity."

Keith's note: Last week a number of articles appeared with the startling (at least to the authors) news that President Trump was going to cut all of NASA's Earth science programs. The authors based this arm waving on quotes in the Guardian by on-again/off-again/on-again Trump transition team advisor Bob Walker. This is not the first time Walker has said something like this. Back in the middle of October, in a Space News op ed, Walker made similar comments. Other than these two comments by Walker we have little else to go on except some off-handed, indecisive quotes from Trump himself on climate change. So - will Trump gut NASA space science? We only have some hints from someone who may or may not actual know what Trump is going to do. If Trump does take a run at NASA's Earth science programs he'll have allies such as Sen. Ted Cruz and House Science Committee Chair Lamar Smith who have been going after climate-based research funding for years. Then again, Trump may find himself consumed by far more pressing issues. We won't know until a Trump space policy emerges and a Trump team is installed on the 9th floor at NASA Headquarters.

"A senior NASA official has taken the extraordinary step of personally rejecting the claims of One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts that the agency had falsified key data to exaggerate warming in the Arctic. Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told Senator Roberts he was "mistaken" in his assertion that the US agency had "removed" Arctic data to mask warming in the 1940s."

"Thank you for your letter of the 14th November requesting information about the NASA GISTEMP analysis of global surface temperature history. Much of what you ask for is available directly from our website. Links there will lead you to the entirety of the raw data we use, all of which is public domain, along with our analysis code, which is also public. However, you appear to hold a number of misconceptions which I am happy to clarify at this time. Firstly, in the graphs you show the data is quite clearly (and correctly) labelled as originating from GHCN."

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"NASA's Earth science portfolio adequately reflects stakeholder input, ESD's approach to developing the Architecture Plan was reasonable, and the Plan includes missions that address all six of the Agency's Earth science focus areas. However, due primarily to budget issues and the availability and affordability of launch vehicles, NASA has not carried out the Architecture Plan as intended and is increasingly reliant on an aging Earth observation infrastructure to monitor the planet. Specifically, although the Architecture Plan envisioned launching 17 missions by 2020, including 11 by the end of 2016, as of September 2016 the Agency had launched only 7 missions, and it is unlikely the others will launch on the schedule outlined in the Plan. Consequently, as missions are delayed the Architecture Plan has become increasingly outdated and includes missions that may become a lower priority for the science community. While the delays have not prevented NASA from substantially meeting stakeholder needs for Earth observation data, more than half the Agency's 16 operating missions have surpassed their designed lifespan and are increasingly prone to failures that could result in critical data loss and gaps in long-term observation records."

"Why doesn't NASA promote the film more? It's impossible to come away from A Beautiful Planet without being impressed by the orbiting laboratory and the international collaboration that constructed it. But where is the audience? My home is Houston - Space City - where astronauts live and the space station program is managed. But when the movie played here, it did so in one theater, on one screen, for a single week. When I attended, just a few astronauts and their friends and families were in the audience. As of last Sunday, A Beautiful Planet had grossed less than $1 million in box office sales across the country."

Keith's note: NASA never even bothered to issue a media advisory here in Washington. NASM did not send out one either. The plan apparently seems to be that word of mouth is the preferred mode of advertising. That said, the film did cost NASA money. Camera upmass, crew time, etc. When you calculate cost per hour of crew time, upmass, downmass, etc. it is not insignificant. You'd think that someone would be mounting a much more intense PR campaign - especially one that enlisted NASA. As best I can tell they had invitation-only premiere parties with lots of blue-suited astronauts (pictures) a few hand-picked media - and that's it. This webpage for A Beautiful Planet has a CASIS logo at the bottom. But there is zero mention of this film on the CASIS website. Nor did CASIS even bother to issue any media advisories or press release. I used to be baffled by this indifference on the part of NASA when it came to things that were clearly worth promoting only to see them do little - or nothing. Now I'm used to seeing missed opportunities for NASA to be relevant and explanatory in terms of public events happening once a week. As for CASIS - they are just clueless - and always have been. So no surprise there.

"As for me, I've no complaints. I'm very grateful for the experiences I've had on this planet. As an astronaut I spacewalked 220 miles above the Earth. Floating alongside the International Space Station, I watched hurricanes cartwheel across oceans, the Amazon snake its way to the sea through a brilliant green carpet of forest, and gigantic nighttime thunderstorms flash and flare for hundreds of miles along the Equator. From this God's-eye-view, I saw how fragile and infinitely precious the Earth is. I'm hopeful for its future. And so, I'm going to work tomorrow."

"I'm a climate scientist who has just been told I have Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. This diagnosis puts me in an interesting position. I've spent much of my professional life thinking about the science of climate change, which is best viewed through a multidecadal lens. At some level I was sure that, even at my present age of 60, I would live to see the most critical part of the problem, and its possible solutions, play out in my lifetime. Now that my personal horizon has been steeply foreshortened, I was forced to decide how to spend my remaining time. Was continuing to think about climate change worth the bother?"

"And yet, it took no time at all for the climate change deniers to start attacking Sellers, as ThinkProgress points out. James Delingpole author of such illuminating articles as "Paris Climate Talks Are Doomed Because China Knows 'Climate Change' Is A Hoax" wrote a post on Breitbart with the ridiculous headline "NASA Chief: Global Warming Is Real Because I Have Cancer".

"Sorry, but no. Sellers' cancer says no more about the validity of global warming theory than Einstein's having shagged Marilyn Monroe says about the validity of his theory of relativity. Interesting biographical details and personal tragedy have nothing to do with the scientific method. (Well, not unless it's Francis Bacon killing himself while experimenting on a frozen chicken). I'm genuinely surprised that NASA thought it was at all a good idea to publish this emotive piece. I shouldn't be surprised if it alienates more people than it persuades. After all, if climate change were really such a desperately important, scientifically proven issue, it certainly wouldn't need moving pleas from dying men to push its cause. The facts would speak for themselves."

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"Earth's 2015 surface temperatures were the warmest since modern record keeping began in 1880, according to independent analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Globally-averaged temperatures in 2015 shattered the previous mark set in 2014 by 0.23 degrees Fahrenheit (0.13 Celsius). Only once before, in 1998, has the new record been greater than the old record by this much."

"As I learned in the Marine Corps and Kathy learned in the reserves, we have core values," said NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden, Jr., who flew with her on two space missions, including one that deployed the Hubble Space Telescope. "They're not challenging a bureaucrat or a traditional political appointee," Bolden said of Republicans in Congress. "They're challenging a scientist. They just picked the wrong person." Just shy of two years into the job, Sullivan, 64, has been drawn into a lingering and passionate skepticism among some congressional Republicans of the mainstream scientific consensus that man-made pollution is behind the planet's recent warming."

"Today, as part of the 2015 U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris, "Action Day" participants will view the video Call to Earth - A Message from the World's Astronauts, featuring International Space Station Commander Scott Kelly, Flight Engineer Kjell N. Lindgren, and 16 astronauts from 6 countries urging leaders of COP21 to take action to mitigate climate change now, not tomorrow."

"Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, has subpoenaed scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and demanded that they turn over internal e-mails related to their research. Their findings contradicted earlier work showing that global warming had paused, and Smith, a climate change skeptic, has accused them of altering global temperature data and rushing to publish their research in the June issue of the journal Science."

"AAAS and a half-dozen other leading scientific organizations on Tuesday expressed "grave concern" about a Congressional inquiry that has unfoundedly called into question the integrity of federal scientists whose research, published in Science, seemed to debunk claims of a global-warming slowdown or "hiatus." In a letter to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, the group acknowledged the importance of appropriate congressional oversight of federally funded research, but emphasized that "scientists should not be subjected to fraud investigations or harassment simply for providing scientific results that some may see as politically controversial."

"As NOAA has endured a series of Congressional attacks this fall for its climate change research, the agency's administrator, Kathryn Sullivan, has largely remained silent. But the former astronaut's wingmate for two spaceflights, Charles Bolden, has not been so reticent. The NASA administrator this week continued to blister Congress for its tack on climate change science. After delivering a keynote speech on the commercialization of space at the SpaceCom conference in Houston Tuesday, Bolden talked to Ars about his own agency's Earth science research. He also addressed the efforts by Texas Congressman Lamar Smith, who chairs the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, to obtain the e-mails of NOAA climate scientists, in which Smith expects to find political influence and perhaps fraud."

"Smith wrote that "Despite Dr. Karl's apparent awareness of these concerns, the study was moved to publication without the underlying data having been subjected to the appropriate reviews. More troubling, it appears that NOAA employees raised concerns about the timing and readiness of the study's release through e-mails, including several communications just before its publication in April, May, and June of 2015. These allegations raise serious questions about the Karl study and NOAA's public statements about its conclusions."

"Unfortunately, the Chairman also used the hearing as a platform to continue his attack on NOAA's climate science. He said, "Another example of how this administration attempts to promote its suspicious climate agenda can be seen at NOAA. Its employees altered historical climate data to get politically correct results in an attempt to disprove the hiatus in global temperature increases."

"The U.S. Geological Survey is raising serious doubts about a recent study that calculates a 99.9% chance of a large earthquake in the Los Angeles area in the next three years. The USGS took the rare step of issuing a statement raising questions about the study, recently published in the journal Earth and Space Science and coauthored by a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Caada Flintridge. "I have serious doubts that the conclusions of the paper are supported by the analysis that's presented there," Robert Graves, a USGS seismologist and Southern California coordinator for earthquake hazards, said in an interview Tuesday. The study lists Graves as a consultant who helped with calculations for the study, but Graves says he has deep concerns about the study."

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"NASA and USAID have accomplished a lot together. Launch of this important new hub in the SERVIR network, which includes SERVIR-Himalaya, SERVIR-Eastern and Southern Africa and the Applied Sciences Team projects in Mesoamerica, is certainly tangible proof that what we're doing is working. We get a lot of questions about our Earth observation work at NASA. In fact, a lot of people aren't even aware that it's such a core function of the agency. But make no mistake, NASA is deeply committed to Earth science and the value it provides people around the globe. We have been since our founding."

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"Mission managers for NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) observatory have determined that its radar, one of the satellite's two science instruments, can no longer return data. ... The SMAP spacecraft continues normal operations and the first data release of soil moisture products is expected in late September. "Although some of the planned applications of SMAP data will be impacted by the loss of the radar, the SMAP mission will continue to produce valuable science for important Earth system studies," said Dara Entekhabi, SMAP Science Team lead at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. On July 7, SMAP's radar stopped transmitting due to an anomaly involving the radar's high-power amplifier (HPA)."

Keith's note: Wow. JPL is sure spinning this bad news on this $915 million mission. That's almost a billion dollars. The radar was at the core of SMAP's mission i.e. "one of the satellite's two science instruments". It failed. Sure, other stuff still works but that radar broke after only a few months. But JPL PAO wants you to think that "The SMAP spacecraft continues normal operations." So, I guess radar failure is considered "normal"?

Keith's note: Hey @AlGore according to NASA "These images were taken between 3:50 p.m. and 8:45 p.m. EDT on July 16." Guess what: that means that we saw an almost-new Moon here on Earth - to use your term we were looking at the "dark side" of the Moon which happened to be the near side of the Moon at the point - you know, the side of the Moon that faces Earth. DSCOVR was looking at the lunar farside which was almost fully lit at that point. It is not "dark" in this photo. Its called Science, Al.

Keith's update: As a reader notes NASA does not even know what "dark Side" means i.e. at least not consistently. The NASA press release for this image says "The series of test images shows the fully illuminated "dark side" of the moon that is never visible from Earth.

NASA itself is confused about this terminology: Common Moon Misconceptions, NASA: "Misconception: The same half of the Moon is in darkness all the time-i.e. that there is a dark side of the Moon. Reality: The Moon has no side that is constantly dark; the front and back are alternately lit as the Moon rotates. Far side is a more accurate term."

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"A NASA camera aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite captured a unique view of the moon as it moved in front of the sunlit side of Earth last month. The series of test images shows the fully illuminated "dark side" of the moon that is never visible from Earth. The images were captured by NASA's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), a four megapixel CCD camera and telescope on the DSCOVR satellite orbiting 1 million miles from Earth. From its position between the sun and Earth, DSCOVR conducts its primary mission of real-time solar wind monitoring for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)."

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"A NASA camera on the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite has returned its first view of the entire sunlit side of Earth from one million miles away."

"This color image of Earth was taken by NASA's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), a four megapixel CCD camera and telescope. The image was generated by combining three separate images to create a photographic-quality image. The camera takes a series of 10 images using different narrowband filters -- from ultraviolet to near infrared -- to produce a variety of science products. The red, green and blue channel images are used in these color images."

"But NASA is also one of the main purveyors of the satellite observations of Earth that are a basic necessity for many fields of Earth science. That's the part Cruz doesn't like: He wants to slash the agency's budget for Earth sciencesin particular, for climate change, a subject on which Cruz's theories are, in the words of one scientist, "a load of claptrap." It's not just Cruz. In the House, Republicans are forging ahead with a bill that would gut $90 million from NASA's Earth science budget. There are a couple major problems with that approach, and they make Cruz's lauding of the Pluto mission distinctly ironic and hypocritical. First, NASA is uniquely equipped among federal agencies to send satellites into space, so it would be hard to transfer its Earth research to some other outfit. (These are the very satellites, by the way, that produce the data Cruz likes to erroneously cite as evidence against global warming.)"

Keith's note: Comments are closed. People have gone totally off topic and are ranting and making personal attacks. Please do not try and post comments elsewhere since they will be deleted.

"But even with the broader effort, the emphasis on NASA seems particularly pointed. How many people even know what the NSF stands for or what the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) does all day? But NASA is different. Every kid knows NASA. Every parent knows NASA. NASA is cool. NASA is Superman. So, when NASA tells us that Earth's climate is changing because of human activity, it carries a lot of weight. It's a weight climate denialists have a hard time bearing up under. Honestly, when it comes to getting the science of climate change right, who are you going to believe? A radio talk show host or NASA? The angry denialists in the comments section of this blog or NASA? The politician who says, "Well, I am not a scientist" or the scientists at NASA? The answer is pretty clear."

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"NASA controls more than a dozen satellites and spacecraft, monitoring everything from melting ice to water storage to rain and snow. To the agency's scientists and supporters, these programs are essential to understanding the planet and the changing climate, and part of its core mission. But to congressional Republicans, they are just another example of an administration wasting money on climate-change research, zapping funds away from what NASA should be doing: blasting into and exploring space.
House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, last week moved a two-year NASA bill through his committee that would shift money away from the Earth Science program to spend on planetary exploration. "There are 13 other agencies involved in climate-change research, but only one that is responsible for space exploration," Smith said at a recent hearing."

"Just a few months ago we marked up and passed out of the House a bipartisan NASA authorization. That bill was negotiated on a bipartisan basis, voice voted out of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology, and then passed by the full House in a similar fashion. Today, my committee, the Science, Space and Technology Committee, is marking up H.R. 2039 -- a NASA reauthorization act that the Democrats on the committee did not even know existed until late last Friday. Needless to say, there was no bipartisan negotiating. After we saw the bill, we understood why. In addition to other problems in the bill, it cuts earth science funding by more than $320 million. Earth science, of course, includes climate science."

"In a letter to Chairman Smith and Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), Planetary Society Director of Advocacy Casey Dreier praised the Committee's "scientifically ambitious, affordable plan of solar system exploration" as well as the bill's "clear directives and support for [NASA's] future exploration." The Planetary Society, led by CEO Bill Nye, is considered one of the largest and most influential public space organizations in the world."

Keith's note: Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye (The Science Guy®) got to fly on Air Force One and hang out with President Obama on Earth Day. According to the Planetary Society website"Last week, our CEO Bill Nye joined The President of the United States for an Earth Day visit to The Everglades, one of the country's renowned National Parks and a vital global ecosystem. The Washington Post covered the news, and we at The Planetary Society shared in the excitement."

Yet at the same time Bill Nye (The Science Guy®) was talking about the importance of Earth science and climate change with the President his organization was sending a letter of overt support to the Republican-led House Science Committee which is seeking to cut funding for the very same things that Bill Nye (The Science Guy®) and President Obama were openly supporting. No where in that letter (now trumpeted by the Committee) does the Planetary Society mention the value of NASA Earth and climate studies on this planet or express concern that this committee desires to cut that research by $320 million. These cuts are proposed against the budget submitted by the same President that Bill Nye (The Science Guy®) was hanging out with.

Yet curiously in this 29 April 2015 Planetary Society post Good Planetary Support in A Flawed NASA Bill the author says "Obviously, the cuts to Earth Science make this a hard bill to support, therefore The Planetary Society cannot support the full bill as written at this early stage. We want an Authorization bill for NASA that can pass Congress and be signed by the White House, we hope that the committee markup will find ways to preserve and grow all science as this moves forward." Yet the Planetary Society makes no mention of these concerns in their letter of support for the proposed National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act for 2016 and 2017.

Which is it, Bill Nye (The Science Guy®)? Do you and/or the Planetary Society support the proposed cuts to Earth and climate science or do you oppose these cuts? Earth is a "planet" too.

"The battle lines are being drawn between Congress and the White House in regard to NASA's budget, and this year they're moving closer to home the planet Earth. In the newly released House of Representatives budget authorization mark-up for fiscal year 2016 one step before Congress actually appropriates the money lawmakers have cut funding for NASA's Earth science programs to $1.45 billion. In his budget request to Congress, shown below, the President sought $1.947 billion."

"Aspirational levels create a balanced portfolio between Exploration and Science ($4.95 billion each), and within the Science Mission Directorate ($1.45B for Earth Science, $1.5 billion for Planetary Science, and $2 billion for Astrophysics, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and Heliophysics combined). The bill fully funds the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion crew vehicle (Orion) under both the aspirational and constrained authorization levels, and accelerates the development of SLS and Orion in FY17 under the aspirational level. Similarly, the bill fully funds the Commercial Crew program under the aspirational level and increases funding under even the constrained level by $331 million."

"The Obama administration has consistently cut funding for these human space exploration programs, while increasing funding for the Earth Science Division by more than 63 percent. The bill provides authorization levels consistent with NASA's budget request, providing that current restraints within the Budget Control Act are satisfied."

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"During a subcommittee hearing on NASA's budget, Cruz asked Bolden to explain the agency's core mission. Our core mission from the very beginning has been to investigate, explore space and the Earth environment, and to help us make this place a better place," Bolden replied. Cruz, true to form, balked at the "Earth environment" part."

"Bolden defended spending more money on Earth science activities, saying he is "proud" of it since it's led to a greater understanding of the planet. "We can't go anywhere if the Kennedy Space Center goes underwater and we don't know it "We can't go anywhere if the Kennedy Space Center goes underwater and we don't know it -- and that's understanding our environment," Bolden said, in a clear reference to global warming-related sea level rise. "It is absolutely critical that we understand Earth's environment because this is the only place that we have to live."

Keith's note: Perhaps if Sen. Cruz were to take the time to read the public law that originated in Congress - the one that established NASA and provides its charter - he'd understand why NASA does what it does.

Chapter 201: National Aeronautics and Space Program: Congressional Declaration of Policy and Purpose: "(d) Objectives of Aeronautical and Space Activities.--The aeronautical and space activities of the United States shall be conducted so as to contribute materially to one or more of the following objectives: (1) The expansion of human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space. ..."

Keith's update: And for all of you who seem to feel the need to comment using the word "socialist agenda" or "Obama leftists" with regard to the 2010 Amended version, have a look at the original 1958 text

"(c) The aeronautical and space activities of the United States shall be conducted so as to contribute materially to one or more of the following objectives: (1) The expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space;"

As for adding "Earth" to the NASA authorization act, contrary to what all the Obama haters have been trying to post, it was not added in 2010 but rather was added by the "National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act, 1985," Public Law 98-361, July 16, 1984, section 110(b) (98 Stat. 426). when Ronald Reagan was president with a Republican-controlled Senate.

"(d) The aeronautical and space activities of the United States shall be conducted so as to contribute materially to one or more of the following objectives: (1) The expansion of human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space;"

"Today, the Subcommittees on Oversight and Environment held a joint hearing to examine schedule delays to our nation's next generation weather forecasting satellites and the implications of the impending gap in weather data. Witnesses provided an update on operations and development of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) polar-orbiting (JPSS) and geostationary (GOES) weather satellite programs and discussed recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports on the two programs."

"The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee today announced who will chair its subcommittees in the 114th Congress. Ted Cruz (R-TX) will chair the subcommittee that oversees NASA, while Marco Rubio (R-FL) will chair the one with jurisdiction over NOAA."

"Texas Senator Ted Cruz, another climate denier, may be next-in-line to become chair of the Subcommittee on Science and Space, which oversees agencies like the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy."

"Formerly known as Triana, DSCOVR was initially planned in the late 1990s as a NASA Earth science mission that would image Earth in 10 spectral bands and measure how much energy was being reflected and emitted from Earth. Seven years later, NOAA and the Air Force worked with NASA to remove DSCOVR from storage so the spacecraft and instruments could be tested to verify their flight readiness. NOAA funded NASA to refurbish the DSCOVR satellite and instruments. The U.S. Air Force is funding and overseeing the launch of the spacecraft."

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"As the Atlantic Ocean's hurricane season hits its peak, media are invited to visit NASA's latest airborne hurricane research mission using remotely piloted aircraft on Thursday, Sept. 11 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. EDT, at the agency's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The presentation to the media will be streamed online live beginning at 10 a.m. at:http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-tv-wallops"

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"Of all the planets NASA has explored, none have matched the dynamic complexity of our own. Earth is constantly changing, and NASA are working constantly to explore and understand the planet on scales from local to global."

"In this session, representatives of agencies, organizations, and communities that make use of space-based remote sensing data in support of scientific and societal needs will discuss those uses, including both those now carried out using existing data, as well as potential future uses based on the data that are anticipated to become available in the future. Uses will cover topics such as operational forecasting/prediction, resource management, policy development, scientific assessment, and commercial product development."

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"On July 23rd, 1972, the first Landsat spacecraft launched into orbit. At the time, it was called "Earth Resources Technology Satellite," or ERTS, and was the first satellite to use a scanning spectrophotometer.

...

Celebrating this anniversary, this video is a "greatest hits" montage of Landsat data. Throughout the decades, Landsat satellites have given us a detailed view of the changes to Earth's land surface."

"The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) raced skyward from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, on a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. Approximately 56 minutes after the launch, the observatory separated from the rocket's second stage into an initial 429-mile (690-kilometer) orbit. The spacecraft then performed a series of activation procedures, established communications with ground controllers and unfurled its twin sets of solar arrays. Initial telemetry shows the spacecraft is in excellent condition."

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The spacecraft will sample the global geographic distribution of the sources and sinks of carbon dioxide and allow scientists to study their changes over time more completely than can be done with any existing data. Since 2009, Earth scientists have been preparing for OCO-2 by taking advantage of observations from the Japanese GOSAT satellite. OCO-2 replaces a nearly identical NASA spacecraft lost because of a rocket launch mishap in February 2009.

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"Long before man journeyed to the moon and looked back at the tiny, fragile planet that houses humanity, remote orbiters were sending back pictures of home. Sent to scope out potential landing sites on the Moon, the series of five Lunar Orbiters also sent back the earliest views of Earth from another celestial body. This image, taken in 1966 by Lunar Orbiter 1, is among the first views of Earth from the Moon. In the black-and-white image, a crescent Earth floats majestically behind the lumpy surface of the Moon."

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"The B612 Foundation will hold a press conference today which will be webcast from the Seattle Museum of Flight today. The press conference will feature the following new video of data from a nuclear-test-ban-treaty organization showing multiple atomic-bomb-scale asteroid impacts on Earth since 2001. You can watch the press conference below starting at 2:30 p.m. EDT."

Keith's note: @NASASocial is retweeting lots of selfies today (this is one of the ones they decided to retweet). Instead of trying to raise issues relevant to Earth Day, NASA is turning the #Globalselfie thing into posting selfies of people and their pets. They could have easily tweeted a little guidance to people and ask them to highlight issues that affect Earth, the environment, climate change. They could also post links to specific projects that NASA is doing in this regard ... or organizations working to address these issues - but no, that takes strategic thought. Why think too hard, @NASASocial? Just post selfies.

"A soon-to-be published research paper 'Human and Nature Dynamics (HANDY): Modeling Inequality and Use of Resources in the Collapse or Sustainability of Societies' by University of Maryland researchers Safa Motesharrei and Eugenia Kalnay, and University of Minnesota's Jorge Rivas was not solicited, directed or reviewed by NASA. It is an independent study by the university researchers utilizing research tools developed for a separate NASA activity. "As is the case with all independent research, the views and conclusions in the paper are those of the authors alone. NASA does not endorse the paper or its conclusions."

Keith's 20 March update: The paper claims that it was partially funded by NASA - and mentions a specific NASA grant i.e. "NASA/GSFC grant NNX12AD03A". NASA seems to be saying that it was not funded by NASA.

Keith's 21 March update: NASA responded to my questions on this topic:

NASAWATCH: Did NASA money support this work and if so how much and who (program, project, directorate) paid for it?

NASA: In 2010, NASA funded a small pilot project at the University of Maryland to adapt a physical climate simulation model for use at the University. A small secondary task, valued at less than $30,000, was used to couple the climate model with a population model. The resulting model, the "Human And Nature DYnamical' (HANDY) model is a simplified model of human-climate interactions.

NASAWATCH: If NASA funds were used why has it been pulled offline? Is not such work a matter of public record?

NASA: NASA has not pulled the paper offline or directed it to be done. Questions regarding the paper itself should be directed to the University of Maryland.

NASAWATCH: Did NASA solicit this research - and if so what specific program solicited and funded it?

NASA: NASA did not solicit the research in this paper. The HANDY model was part of a pilot study funded as part of Goddard's Modeling, Analysis and Prediction program.

NASAWATCH: Is there a statement of work/proposal to accompany this paper?

NASA: Yes. There was a Statement of Work that covered the development of the model.

NASAWATCH: Does NASA endorse the findings?

NASA: No.

NASAWATCH: Will NASA be publishing/promoting this paper and its findings?

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"The monster winter storm that brought icing to the U.S. southeast moved northward along the Eastern Seaboard and brought snow, sleet and rain from the Mid-Atlantic to New England on February 13. A new image from NOAA's GOES satellite showed clouds associated with the massive winter storm stretch from the U.S. southeast to the northeast."

@NASA_Marshall Marshall will resume operations & reopen Friday, Feb 14. Only Gates 9, 7, 1 will be open for early commute. Watch for ice; travel carefully!

Federal agencies in the Washington, DC, area are OPEN under 2 hours DELAYED ARRIVAL and employees have the OPTION FOR UNSCHEDULED LEAVE OR UNSCHEDULED TELEWORK. Employees should plan to arrive for work no more than 2 hours later than they would be expected to arrive.

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"The Manitoba Museum is reporting Winnipeg's temperatures on Tuesday were actually as cold as the surface of Mars. According to the Curiosity Rover, Mars reached a maximum temperature of -29 C on Tuesday, a temperature Winnipeg only reached shortly before 3 p.m. The deep freeze over much of Southern Manitoba prompted extreme wind chill warnings in the area and most of the north. In Winnipeg, the daytime high temperature for Tuesday was only expected to reach -31 C, but the windchill made it feel more like -40 to -50. That means exposed skin can freeze in less than five minutes."

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"Among the materials NASA withheld were two electronic directories referred to as the "Steve" and "alternate cleaning" directories, media inquiries about the data corrections, and two email accounts of Dr. Gavin Schmidt, a NASA scientist who teaches at Columbia University and contributes to a blog called RealClimate.org. Although CEI wanted all that and more, Judge Rothstein ordered NASA to release only the "Steve" directory and one of Dr. Schmidt's email accounts, finding that the other materials either held no responsive documents or fell within a valid FOIA exemption. Declining to go further, Rothstein rejected CEI's contention that that NASA had acted in bad faith. "CEI"s request for discovery is not justified here because CEI has not provided any evidence that the agency acted in bad faith and the outstanding issues of fact do not suggest bad faith on the part of NASA," Judge Rothstein ruled."

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"The ozone hole that forms each year in the stratosphere over Antarctica was slightly smaller in 2013 than average in recent decades, according to NASA satellite data. The ozone hole is a seasonal phenomenon that starts to form during the Antarctic spring (August and September). The September-October 2013 average size of the hole was 8.1 million square miles (21 million square kilometers)."

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"The National Science Foundation (NSF) is responsible for managing and coordinating the U.S. Antarctic Program (USAP) on behalf of the nation. This includes providing support personnel and facilities and coordinating transportation and other logistics for scientific research. Due to the lapse in appropriation, funds for this support will be depleted on or about October 14, 2013. Without additional funding, NSF has directed its Antarctic support contractor to begin planning and implementing caretaker status for research stations, ships and other assets. The agency is required to take this step as a result of the absence of appropriation and the Antideficiency Act."

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"New data visualizations from the NASA Center for Climate Simulation and NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., show how climate models used in the new report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimate possible temperature and precipitation pattern changes throughout the 21st century."

"Scientists can now say with extreme confidence that human activity is the dominant cause of the global warming observed since the 1950s, a new report by an international scientific group said Friday.

Calling man-made warming "extremely likely," the (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change used the strongest words yet on the issue as it adopted its assessment on the state of the climate system."

"The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has identified a high probability in degraded weather satellite coverage starting as early as next year, and has designated this data gap as a new high-risk area in a report earlier this year. Given this potential gap in weather satellite coverage, today's hearing addressed questions about the administration's priorities in funding weather satellites and research as compared to climate change-monitoring satellites and research."

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Question: According to NASA, what is the largest living organism visible from Earth orbit? Answer: Australia's Great Barrier Reef

"The Great Barrier Reef extends for 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) along the northeastern coast of Australia. It is not a single reef, but a vast maze of reefs, passages and coral cays (islands that are part of the reef). The white calcium carbonate that coats the living coral reflects light, making the water above the reef appear bright blue from space. This phenomenon allows the reef to be the largest living organism visible in National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) satellite photos and videos ..."

Keith's note: Wrong. Coral reefs are collections of lots of organisms of many different species - not a single organism. "The largest living organism visible from Earth orbit" is most likely Pando - although larger examples may be awaiting discovery.

"Pando (Latin for "I spread"), also known as The Trembling Giant, is a clonal colony of a single male quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) determined to be a single living organism by identical genetic markers and one massive underground root system. The plant is estimated to weigh collectively 6,000,000 kg (6,600 short tons), making it the heaviest known organism. The root system of Pando, at an estimated 80,000 years old, is among the oldest known living organisms."

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"While interest in CubeSats--spacecraft as small as ten centimeters on a side and weighing one kilogram--has grown in recent years, one challenge facing the community of CubeSat developers is whether such spacecraft can perform useful missions, beyond education (many satellites are built by student groups) and technology development and demonstration. For one group at the University of Colorado, it appears that CubeSats can carry out research worthy of publication in scientific journals."

"The National Research Council (NRC) today issued its much-anticipated report on how to ensure continuity of Landsat-type land imaging data. The bottom line is that a sustained program is not viable under current mission development and management practices. Instead, the NRC calls for a "systematic and deliberate program" instead of the "historical pattern of chaotic programmatic support and ad hoc design and implementation of spacecraft and sensors" that has characterized the Landsat program to date.

... In short, the report calls for a "systematic and deliberate program with the goal of continuing to collect vital data within lower, well-defined, manageable budgets" to "replace the historical pattern of chaotic programmatic support and ad hoc design and implementation of spacecraft and sensors in the Landsat series.""

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"The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite acquired this image of Tropical Storm Flossie at 1:10 p.m. local time (23:10 Universal Time) on July 28, 2013. The storm was moving westward across the Pacific Ocean, headed for the Hawaiian Islands. It is expected to be the first tropical storm to make landfall on the islands in nearly 20 years."

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"NASA will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT today to present the first images from NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS), which was launched June 27 on a mission to study the sun."

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"The curtain has come down on a superstar of the satellite oceanography world that played the "Great Blue Way" of the world's ocean for 11 1/2 years. The successful joint NASA and Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) Jason-1 ocean altimetry satellite was decommissioned this week following the loss of its last remaining transmitter.

Jason-1 has been a resounding scientific, technical, and international success," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "The mission met all of its requirements, performed an extended mission and demonstrated how a long-term climate data record should be established from successively launched satellites. Since launch, it has charted nearly 1.6 inches (4 centimeters) of rise in global sea levels, a critical measure of climate change and a direct result of global warming. The Jason satellite series provides the most accurate measure of this impact, which is felt all over the globe."

Marc's note: While Jason-1 is decommissioned, Jason-2 continues operation and Jason-3 will be launched sometime in 2015.

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"Having looked back at Earth from outer space, I have seen just how fragile our home planet is - and I'm committed to doing everything I can to help protect it.

Yesterday, President Obama announced an ambitious Climate Action Plan to cut carbon pollution and put us on a more environmentally sustainable course. At NASA, where one of our primary goals is to improve life for everyone on the planet, I'm pleased to say that we have a number of missions already supporting this important work through our robust Earth Science program."

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"Planet Labs, a space and analytics company, announced plans to launch the world's largest fleet of Earth imaging satellites to image the changing planet and provide open access to that information. Today, they revealed the first images from their first two satellites.

"Planet Labs will create an entirely new data set, with both humanitarian and commercial value," said Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. "We've become used to having imagery of the entire Earth. What we haven't yet understood is how transformative it will be when that imagery is regularly and frequently updated." Everyone from ecologists to citizen journalists will be able to track frequent changes to any place on the planet -- a frequency and coverage greater than ever seen before."

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"A powerful storm swept across the Midwestern U.S. late on June 12, 2012 and is continuing to move across the Mid-Atlantic. Around 0700z (3am EDT), the Suomi NPP satellite passed over the storm as the most intense areas were along the Ohio-West Virginia-Pennsylvania border."

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"A soggy 2013 spring, with near record rainfall in some areas, has led to flood warnings in Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma. With the floodwaters come questions as millions brace for the next wave of thunderstorms: Will this be another multi-billion dollar flood like the ones that hammered the Midwest in 1993 and 2008? How much rainwater will fall into rivers, and where will those rivers flood into towns? Just how good are those flood predictions, and could they be better?"

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The Arctic permafrost contains vast amount off organic carbon stored over millennia. A NASA program, CARVE, is testing a hypotheses that Arctic carbon reservoirs are vulnerable to climate warming. Will these reservoirs be released? And what happens if these vast amount of stored carbon are released?

Early results: "The CARVE science team is busy analyzing data from its first full year of science flights. What they're finding, Miller said, is both amazing and potentially troubling."

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"NOAA today officially returned the GOES-13 spacecraft to normal operations, after tests showed a micrometeoroid, likely hit the arm for the solar array panel on May 22, knocking the spacecraft off its delicate, geostationary balance."

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"NASA's Aqua satellite passed over low pressure System 91L in the Gulf of Mexico and captured infrared imagery that revealed a lot of uplift and strong thunderstorms in the eastern part of the storm despite a poorly organized circulation. NOAA's GOES-East satellite showed the large extent of the low pressure area stretching from Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula to Florida.

System 91L is a tropical low pressure area that has been lingering in the northwestern Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico for several days. The low pressure area is located in the central Gulf of Mexico and covers a large area. It has a large area of disorganized thunderstorms and strong gusty winds over the southeastern Gulf."

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"A new dataset called Bedmap2 gives a clearer picture of Antarctica from the ice surface down to the bedrock below. Bedmap2 is a significant improvement on the previous collection of Antarctic data--known as Bedmap--that was produced more than 10 years ago."

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"Obama proposed Wednesday spending nearly $35 million in his 2014 budget to refurbish a satellite, nicknamed GoreSat by critics, that's been sitting in storage after it was shelved in 2001, months after Bush took office. It cost about $100 million by then with NASA's internal auditors faulting its cost increases."

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"Dr. Hansen had already become an activist in recent years, taking vacation time from NASA to appear at climate protests and allowing himself to be arrested or cited a half-dozen times. But those activities, going well beyond the usual role of government scientists, had raised eyebrows at NASA headquarters in Washington. "It was becoming clear that there were people in NASA who would be much happier if the 'sideshow' would exit," Dr. Hansen said in an e-mail."

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"NASA's top climate scientist and government official James Hansen was arrested Wednesday outside the White House -- at least the fourth arrest now for the scientist. Hansen, a controversial and highly vocal proponent of the argument that man's actions have dramatically affected the planet's climate, is the director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies -- a position for which he earns a $180,000 taxpayer-paid salary ... a NASA spokesman told FoxNews.com after a 2011 arrest that what Hansen does in his own time is none of the government's business. "The agency doesn't comment on personnel matters," Ed Campion, a spokesman for parent organization Goddard Space Flight Center, told FoxNews.com."

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"At a minimum, this year's decline needs to be reversed to ensure that selection rates are improved to stop the imminent loss of the younger generation of planetary scientists as well as many seasoned researchers. The cost is frankly small and demands high priority. Multi-year budget planning is essential. We also face significant negative consequences from the effective collapse of the Discovery program combined with the termination of the Mars Scount program."

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"Today, the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) instrument on MSG-3 captured its first image of the Earth. This demonstrates that Europe's latest geostationary weather satellite, launched on 5 July, is performing well and is on its way to taking over operational service after six months of commissioning."

"DigitalGlobe (DGI), a leading global provider of high-resolution earth imagery solutions, today announced an agreement with the Enough Project to continue providing unrivaled imagery and analysis services to monitor evidence of bombings, razed villages and possible threats to civilians in Sudan in an effort called the Satellite Sentinel Project (SSP). In addition to the imagery and analysis provided under the terms of this new agreement, DigitalGlobe will also contribute additional in-kind services."

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"An Earth observation satellite conceived by former Vice President Al Gore -- but banished to a Maryland warehouse by foes of climate change after George W. Bush beat Gore for the presidency -- could get a ride into space as early as 2014. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wants about $23 million next year to continue a quiet reboot of the satellite, and spending bills circulating in Congress show that lawmakers -- so far -- are willing go along with it."

Keith's note: First it was called "Triana". NASAWatch called it "GoreSat". Then it was "Deep Space Climate Observatory" (DSCOVR). If this spacecraft is eventually launched, you can be absolutely certain that NASA (or NOAA) will not be able to figure out what Triana has cost since its inception in 1998 and various reincarnations since then. Try and get a consistent cost number out of NASA for Mars Phoenix, for example.

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"After fears were raised that the plan might be a cover for a "spying mission", Hal Maring, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration's lead planner for the project, issued the invitation. He told the Bangkok Post Sunday that Nasa had already explained in detail the aircraft and sensors to be used in the SEAC4RS project."

"NASA said it canceled the mission Tuesday "due to the absence of necessary approvals by regional authorities in the time frame necessary to support the mission's planned deployment and scientific observation window," according to the project's website."

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"Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight Chairman Paul Broun (R-GA) and Subcommittee on Energy and Environment Chairman Andy Harris (R-MD) held a hearing yesterday on the status of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) polar-orbiting and geostationary weather satellites. Two Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports on the respective satellite systems were released at the hearing."

"A report prepared for the NASA Applied Science Program and authored by economists at The Brattle Group finds that the use of NASA's solar and meteorological data services has greatly contributed to the U.S. and international goals of achieving greater energy efficiency and use of renewable energy sources. The study, which was presented today at a workshop hosted by IEEE's Committee on Earth Observation, finds the economic value of the datasets to be between $79 million and $790 million worldwide, with higher ranges possible."

Keith's note: If you go to the NASA Applied Science Program website they make no mention of this report. This rather odd given that they paid for the report - one that has been released and makes some rather important assessments about the value of what NASA does.

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Keith's note: This email/memo was sent from Christopher Strickland's official NASA email account at 10:57 am EDT today to more than 30 individuals - all at their official NASA email addresses. No request for anonymity was requested of me. Nor did I solicit this memo. As far as I am concerned Mr. Strickland made this memo public. I cannot vouch for anything that is contained in the email but he has gone out of his way - in his official capacity at NASA - to tell people about this issue - and does so in a rather cogent fashion. Here is the memo, verbatim.

"To Whom It May Concern:

Due to the culmination of abusive behavior by the Mission Systems Engineer over the past year, including hostile treatment in front of project and division management during a review, and continued assault in the parking lot later that same day; I resign my position as Lead of the High Gain Antenna System for the Global Precipitation Measurement satellite at Goddard Space Flight Center effective immediately.

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"Unfortunately, the Committee has lost confidence in NOAA's ability to control procurement costs or articulate reliable funding profiles. Therefore, we have taken the unprecedented step of transferring responsibility for building our Nation's operational weather satellites from NOAA to NASA," [Mikulski] said."

"Of 23 such satellites now aloft -- carrying dozens of instruments that help weather forecasters produce storm warnings and measure pollution, ocean winds and sea levels -- only six are expected to remain in operation by 2020, and efforts to replace them have stalled, the National Research Council reports."

"The NRC proposes restoring NASA's earth observation satellite funding to the level seen in the late 1990s -- before President George W. Bush reprogrammed money from those satellites into things such as manned spaceflight to Mars. That level stands at about $2 billion."

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"President Obama can't catch a break: Just when he gets right with the gays, the greens come after him. In today's New York Times NASA's leading climate scientist James Hansen takes the president to task for not doing jack on climate change. "President Obama speaks of a 'planet in peril,'" Hansen fumes, "but he does not provide the leadership needed to change the world's course."

"I guess it shouldn't have surprised me these gentlemen -- 49 out of tens of thousands of former NASA employees (more than 18,000 people currently work for NASA, so this is about 0.27% of current employees) would next move into the emotional language. It shouldn't have surprised me, but it disappointed me just the same."

"Here's the note I received from Russell Schweickart after I alerted him about the letter (he was unaware of it): To my knowledge most of the signatories on this letter are in fact engineers (or former engineers). Some are (or were) scientists... But none, to my limited knowledge, are what I would consider qualified climatologists. AND... they have every right to state and argue for their opinion, and I fully support their right on that score."

"49 former NASA scientists and astronauts sent a letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden last week admonishing the agency for it's role in advocating a high degree of certainty that man-made CO2 is a major cause of climate change while neglecting empirical evidence that calls the theory into question. The group, which includes seven Apollo astronauts and two former directors of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, are dismayed over the failure of NASA, and specifically the Goddard Institute For Space Studies (GISS), to make an objective assessment of all available scientific data on climate change."

Keith's note: This press release/group letter should have been titled "Former NASA [JSC] scientists, astronauts admonish agency on climate change position" since virtually everyone who signed it seems to live in Texas or once worked at JSC. In addition, more than 90% of the signers have no apparent "science" background - and this letter is about science (I guess). That said, a lot of the names are very recognizable from NASA's history, and they seem to be upset about something. Oh yes, guys (I only see one female signer): SMD AA John Grunsfeld (also a former JSC employee) has a perfectly good Ph.D.

Note: if comments go off topic and degenerate into a Democrat Vs Republican food fight (as they always seem to do on this topic) I will shut them off.

"NASA sponsors research into many areas of cutting-edge scientific inquiry, including the relationship between carbon dioxide and climate. As an agency, NASA does not draw conclusions and issue 'claims' about research findings. We support open scientific inquiry and discussion."

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"NASA successfully launched five suborbital sounding rockets this morning from its Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia as part of a study of the upper level jet stream. Each of the rockets released a chemical tracer that created milky, white clouds at the edge of space. The launches and clouds were reported to be seen from as far south as Wilmington, N.C.; west to Charlestown, W. Va.; and north to Buffalo, N.Y."

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"Suomi NPP's VIIRS instrument returned this hi-resolution full-disc image of the Earth from several passes made Jan. 4, 2012. The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) mission represents a critical first step in building the next-generation Earth-observing satellite system that will collect data on both long-term climate change and short-term weather conditions."

That's me in the cupola of the International Space Station off the coast of Australia taking my last of over 25,000 pics that I still want to share w/ everyone."

Keith's note: I am confused. Astronaut Ron Garan flies to the International Space Station and sends a non-stop stream of personal - and cool - photos back to Earth via Twitter and Twitpic. Well, these photos usually do not always end up on NASA's Human Spaceflight website but some of them appear on his personal (?) website at fragileoasis.org (the domain is registered to some anonymous individual in Bellveue, Washington) - a website that never seems to use the word "NASA" - unless you scroll to the small text at the bottom of the page with a micro NASA logo. Guess what - that link is to http://nasa.gov . Try it. It does not work. It should say http://www.nasa.gov which does work. Looks like no one bothered (or cared) to check.

Are NASA funds used to run this website? If so, then why the lack of coordination with NASA.gov?. If not, then why isn't NASA running such a high profile site that highlights such a prominent activity that its own official website seems to not want to highlight? Some (but not all) of these photos and commentary by Ron Garan also appear at NASA's blog site.

Ron Garan is a NASA civil servant who was on official duty at taxpayer expense on the ISS. We paid his airfare. We should all be seeing everything he sends back to Earth, without having to hop around various websites, right? NASA should endeavour to collect all that he sends back to Earth - in one place - so as to maximize this dissemination of information to the public. But that is not the case.

These "NASA" sites do not even link to each other. Who is in charge here? NASA PAO?, HEOMD? Ron Garan? Until NASA figures out how to coordinate its "messages" it will be hobbled by stove piping and hobby shop approaches to education and public outreach. The scattered nature of this otherwise inspiring series of photos and operations exposes just how uncoordinated NASA is these days when it comes to telling the taxpaying public what it is doing and why. And then they have the nerve to complain when the public does not seem to understand what they are doing.

Cool stuff Ron. You done good. Some of your stuff is jaw dropping. As a result, perhaps the rest of the agency can learn how to work together as one cohesive and cooperating entity in the future?

This is an awesome image worth spreading across our planet. Is it featured at NASA.gov?

No.

Keith's note: From what I have been able to piece together HEOMD's Beth Beck (the creator of the failed NASA BuzzRoom) is behind this site. Elyse David is the "Executive Producer and Founding Crewmemeber" of Fragile Oasis according to her Twitter page. Beth Beck does more or less whatever she wants to do on this website with near zero coordination with NASA PAO. Despite multiple requests in the past for metrics and a plan for education and public outreach Beth has been unwilling/unable to provide me with anything. Yes, Ron Garan's photos and commentary have been amazing - but when they are not coordinated with NASA.gov's much larger distribution system, they suffer from less than full visibility they might otherwise attain. The net result is that NASA's limited funding for such things is not being spent in the best way possible. Once again one part of NASA simply does not care to coordinate with the other.

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"The phytoplankton bloom pictured in this Envisat image stretches across the Barents Sea off the coast of mainland Europe's most northern point, Cape Nordkinn. The southern area of this deep shelf sea - with an average depth of 230 m - remains mostly ice-free due to the warm North Atlantic Drift. This contributes to its high biological production compared to other oceans of similar latitude."

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"James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, was arrested outside the White House as he joined protesters in urging President Barack Obama to reject TransCanada Corp. (TRP)'s $7 billion pipeline. Before he was taken into custody today, Hansen took a megaphone and implored Obama to act "for the sake of your children and grandchildren." "If Obama chooses the dirty needle it will confirm that the president was just green-washing all along," Hansen, 70, who took a vacation day from his job at the New York based institute to participate in the protest, said in an e-mailed statement."

Keith's note: James Hansen certainly must have a lot of vacation time to burn on these public stunts. I am certain OSTP loves having a NASA employee shouting back at them across the White House lawn over policy. Oh well, at least Hansen speaks his mind - but the way he does these things using his NASA affiliation tends to leave the impression that he says is what everyone at NASA thinks - and that is not accurate. Obviously he does not care.

Oh yes, as I have stated before, while I think Hansen is inappropriately allowing his NASA affiliation to be factored into the public perception of his personal views, I usually agree with Hansen's personal views (but not in this one particular instance).

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"NASA / NOAA GOES-13 satellite image showing earth on August 26, 2011 at 14:45 UTC (10:45 a.m. EDT). Hurricane Irene can been seen on the U.S. East Coast. Irene Almost 1/3 the Size of East Coast. Irene has become a major hurricane, and NASA satellite data shows its diameter is now about 510 miles -- roughly 1/3 the length of the U.S. Atlantic coastline. Hurricane watches are in effect for much of the East Coast."

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This afternoon, starting at approximately 3:45 pm EDT, the International Space Station flew over Hurricane Irene. The flyover lasted approximately 6 minutes. At one point a member of the crew reacted to the sheer size of this storm by saying "We are used to travelling long distances - but this storm stretches from Cuba to Carolinas -- this is a huge scary storm". The flyover was shown live on NASA TV. Below are screen grabs made during the flyover taken from different cameras aboard the ISS.

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"This panoramic view of recently-formed Hurricane Irene was acquired by the crew of the International Space Station early Monday afternoon from a point over the coastal waters of Venezuela. At the time Irene was packing winds of 80mph and was just north of the Mona Passage between Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. Although no eye was visible at this time, the storm was strengthening and exhibited the size and structure of a classic "Cape Verde" hurricane as it tracked west-northwestward towards the southern Bahamas."

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"NOAA Region 1261, very active over the past few days, produced the third of a sequence of Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) and Solar Radio Blackout Events early today. The net effect of that activity is convergent CMEs expected to disturb the geomagnetic field in the early hours, Universal Time (UTC) of August 5. G3 (Strong) Geomagnetic Storm conditions are likely as well as a distinct chance of S2 (Moderate) Solar Radiation Storm levels being surpassed. NOAA 1261 is still in a prime position, relative to Earth, for more geoeffective activity in the next few days."

"IIB. Geophysical Activity Forecast: The geomagnetic field is expected to reach minor to major storm levels with a chance for severe storm periods on 06 August. Heightened activity is expected due to continued effects from the CMEs of 02, 03, and 04 August. Activity is expected to decrease to unsettled to active levels on 07 August. Quiet to unsettled conditions are expected on 08 August."

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"NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth's atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed."

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"Initial test flights are planned for the week of June 27, with up to 14 science flights starting as early as July 1. The P-3B, a four-engine turboprop, will carry nine instruments. The two-engine UC-12 will carry two instruments. Sampling will focus on an area extending from Beltsville, Md., to the northeastern corner of Maryland in a pattern that follows major roadway traffic corridors. The flight path passes over six ground measurement sites operated by the Maryland Department of the Environment."

"In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Washington, D.C., a group claims NASA is withholding documents that show James Hansen failed to comply with ethics rules and financial disclosures regarding substantial compensation he earned outside his $180,000 taxpayer-paid position as director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. ... Mark Hess, chief of communications for the Goddard Space Center, sent Fox News NASA's response to Horner's FOIA request. It said in many cases the documents Horner requested did not exist. Horner claims they should, if Hansen was complying with the law."

"NASA argues the release of the records would constitute a "clearly unwarranted violation of Hansen's privacy rights," and says ATI's lengthy explanation of Dr. Hansen's outside work "had not made the requisite showing that the documents requested would contribute to the public's understanding of the activities of the Government, or how it would shed light on NASA's performance of its statutory duties."

"Aquarius is the product of an international collaborative effort between NASA and the Argentine space agency, with contributions by Canada, France, Brazil, and Italy. This new capability will enhance and complement the European Space Agency's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity satellite designed primarily to measure soil moisture."

Keith's note: There is a memorial banner on the launch tower that reads "In memory of our colleague and friend Hal Chase - the ULA Team". Hal Chase was a ULA employee at VAFB and passed away recently.

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"NASA Goddard Space Flight Center ("GSFC") is looking to enter into a non-funded Space Act Agreement partnership for the development of a climate simulation system referred to hereafter as the "Climate@Home(TM) project." The Climate@Home(TM) project will build a virtual climate simulation supercomputer with contributions from citizens for both their idle computing cycles and local knowledge about climate change."

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"NASA's Terra satellite's first view of northeastern Japan in the wake of a devastating earthquake and tsunami reveal extensive flooding along the coast. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) acquired the top image of the Sendai region on March 12, 2011, at 10:30 a.m. The lower image, taken by Terra MODIS on February 26, 2011, is provided as a point of reference."

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"The launch of NASA's Glory spacecraft from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California is currently planned for no earlier than Friday, Feb. 25 at 5:09 a.m. EST. Engineers from NASA and Orbital Sciences Corp. continue to troubleshoot a technical issue that arose during Wednesday's initial launch attempt. The target launch date also will ensure personnel get the required rest before entering another countdown."

"We write today to assert the importance of maintaining our nation's human spaceflight program. Our constituents spoke loudly and clearly in the last election and sent a wave of new and reelected Members with a mandate to reduce federal spending. Moreover, each of us understands that our nation is on an untenable economic path and spending must be reduced. In getting our fiscal house in order, however, we must focus carefully on ensuring that we preserve critical capabilities and guarantee that agencies are focused on their primary mission. For NASA, that mission is human space exploration, and we ask that NASA funding be allocated in a way that refocuses NASA on this core mission."

"The aeronautical and space activities of the United States shall be conducted so as to contribute materially to one or more of the following objectives:

(1) The expansion of human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space; ... (3) The development and operation of vehicles capable of carrying instruments, equipment, supplies, and living organisms through space"

Note that the FIRST item in the act is studying the Earth, atmosphere, and related space phenomena (such as space weather). Human spaceflight is a subset of the THIRD item. Earth Science, broadly defined, is not a new or strange activity for NASA."

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NASA image release January 31, 2011. This visible image was captured by the GOES-13 satellite and shows the low pressure area bringing snowfall to the Midwest Jan. 31, 2011. Heavy snow is expected today in portions of northern Iowa, southern Minnesota and Wisconsin. Snowfall from the system extends from Michigan west to Montana, Idaho, Utah and Arizona. A mix of rain and snow also stretches into the Ohio and Tennessee valleys, and it is all moving east. This system appears to be as large as 1/3rd of the Continental U.S. The image was created on Jan. 31 at 12:45 p.m. EST (1745 UTC)

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"The NASA Goddard Library has a rare and unique collection of 26 bound volumes of TIROS 1 photography prepared by the Navy in 1961 specifically for NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. This talk will highlight the collection, attempts contemplated to preserve it, and revelations that the "first" image from TIROS, widely distributed around the internet (and even by NOAA and NASA), was not the first photo, nor even taken on the first day of operations!"

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Keith's note: This image was aquired by the ISS crew on 6 January 2011. Although the summit if Everest itself is just out of frame, you can see Everest Base Camp where Scott Parazynski lived and most of the lower portion of Scott's climb to the summit. Basecamp is about half a kilometer from the bottom of the Khumbu icefall and is located in the lower right hand portion of this image, to the right of the "e" in "Khumbutse" (where the red dot is).

"NASA laboratory head James Hansen's anti-democracy rants were published while he was on a November junket in China, but they didn't get much attention until recently. On Jan. 12, the hyperprolific blogger Marc Morano put them on his Climate Depot site, and within hours, the post went viral. In a former life, Mr. Morano was chief global-warming researcher for Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican."

Keith's note: Alas, the global warming deniers continue to villify Hansen (armed with little more than vitriol and arm waving) - and Hansen continues to say whatever he wants where he wants. Yet every time Hansen is quoted the word "NASA" is included - even if he is quoted when not speaking for NASA in an official capacity. No one else at the agency can do that when talking about their day job. I wonder why?

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"Snows are finally winding down in New England today, Dec. 27, as a powerful low pressure system brought blizzard conditions from northern New Jersey to Maine over Christmas weekend. The GOES-13 satellite captured an image of the low's center off the Massachusetts coast and saw the snowfall left behind."

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Astro_Wheels: Wanted to share this view out of the Cupola. We said farewell to our teammates Sasha, Misha and Tracy this weekend and they are safely back on planet Earth. Tracy in quiet reflection of an incredible journey...homeward bound...

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"From 220 miles above Earth, one of the Expedition 25 crew members on the International Space Station took this night time photo featuring the bright lights of Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt on the Mediterranean coast. The Nile River and its delta stand out clearly as well. On the horizon, the airglow of the atmosphere is seen across the Mediterranean. The Sinai Peninsula, at right, is outlined with lights highlighting the Gulf of Suez and Gulf of Aqaba."

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"Sherwood Park, Alberta, Canada (AHN) - Another nail was driven into Alberta's oil sands industry on Tuesday after a top NASA scientist advised the province to leave the tar fields alone. James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies gave the advice to a panel reviewing the proposed Total E&P $9-billion plan to build the Joslyn North Mine."

"One of NASA's top scientists has told a panel reviewing a proposed oil sands mine in northern Alberta that the resource should simply be left in the ground. James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies says allowing new developments such as Total E&P Canada's $9-billion plan to build the Joslyn North mine would make it too hard to manage the impact of climate change."

"One of NASA's top scientists has told a review panel considering a new oilsands mine that the resource should simply be left in the ground. James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies says allowing new developments such as Total's $9-billion Joslyn mine would make it too hard to keep climate change impacts manageable."

Keith's note: I don't dispute anything that Hansen says about this issue, global warming etc. And I do appreciate his enthusiasm and dedication. BUT I am just wondering why he is able to openly flaunt his "NASA" employment in every article that he gets mentioned in, without qualification or exception, as he makes these statements in an overtly public fashion. When other NASA employees do this they get slapped down.

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